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Corporate Troll writes "Robotic penguins were unveiled by German engineering firm Festo this week. Using their flippers, the mechanical penguins (video) can paddle through water just like real ones, while larger helium-filled designs can "swim" through the air. The penguins are on show at the Hannover Messe Trade Exhibition in Germany.
Each penguin carries 3D sonar which is used to monitor its surroundings and avoid collisions with walls or other penguins."

I am still relatively young and without children..but is the purpose here that when we systematically destroy actual penguins' habitat I can still show my kid this robot and say "Well, they used to swim kind of like that"....

Linus Torvalds, the original creator of Linux (a popular operating system kernel), was once bitten by a Little Penguin while on holiday in Australia. Reportedly, this encounter encouraged Torvalds to select Tux as the official Linux mascot.[12]

Fuck me. After those first few posts/. went full circle there, I think.

I've seen plenty of penguins [gdargaud.net] and even been bitten by one: came out behind me as I was chatting with a friend, decided I was in _his_ path and bite me on the knee tendon while hitting me very hard with his bony flippers. I jumped 10 feet in the air. He ended up as a football before I could think about it. I had a limp for a week but he just walked away (fat is very good protection...)

I live in New Zealand and have had blue penguins swimming around me a few times when I've been surfing. I've also seen the tracks they make through the bush on the way to and from their burrows, they can walk a surprisingly long way and climb pretty steep hills. I haven't seen them at night on the tracks but my mother has. I have seen them in their burrows though, on an island which is a scientific reserve. The burrows are man-made and have lids you can look off to peek inside:-).

Not that they don't look cool and all, but whose bright idea was this anyway?"To master energy efficient flight we'll look to nature. We'll learn from the graceful flight of birds, like say... Oh, I don't know, penguins?"

I get the sneaking suspicion that Disney is going to buy a whole fleet of these things and create a Happy Feet show at Disney World.

Not all G- or PG-rated animated films with talking animals are produced or published by The Walt Disney Company. March of the Penguins was distributed by Warner. Happy Feet was also Warner. Surf's Up was Columbia. What was Disney's penguin movie called?

Paddling is drag-based propulsion (i.e. the animal uses the drag from moving a paddle in the opposite direction to produce thrust in the direction they are moving). Paddling is not very efficient because it requires a recovery phase to reset the paddle. This is how most quadrupeds, such as muskrats, polar bears, even humans, swim.

Penguins use lift-based propulsion from pectoral oscillation, or literally flapping their wings, just like the birds that they are. They generate thrust from the forward component of the lift produced by their wings depending on the angle of attack. This is much more efficient, as there is no recovery phase and so thrust can be produced almost constantly. This is how penguins (both real and the robots) and sea lions swim. Seals, whales, and dolphins use the same type of propulsion, but use their flukes or rear flippers instead of their pectoral flippers.

Just to be pedantic, but for some reason, the idea of penguins paddling bothers me.:-/

I know...I know...I just thought the dollar thing made the point more dramtically.

Frankly I can't figure out why it's happening either. With the massive amount of money your government is inventing out of thing air, I've yet to find anyone who's explained to me why the U.S. isn't suffering from the same kind of hyperinflation as places like Zimbabwe and Argentina have in the past (though the degree of that inflation might be different.) I personally won't be surprised by the eventual collapse when it happen

alive need is some more active sonar sources to really screw their world up. Can we make several 100K of these and let them loose in the oceans of the world, dolphins and whales have it too easy these days, this should start driving them on shore enmasse....